Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Living in Peru
Israel J. Ruiz

Peru's Minister of the Interior, Luis Alva Castro announced on Wednesday that the quantity of drugs confiscated in 2008 would be more than double what was seized in 2007.

Alva Castro affirmed that by the end of 2008, Peru's national police will have taken approximately 40 tons (40,000 kilograms) of illegal narcotics from criminals across the country.

The interior minister reported that in the first semester of 2008, over 17 tons of illegal drugs had been confiscated and destroyed.

He noted that this was almost the total amount of drugs seized in all of 2007.

He assured that the central government's anti-drug policies had played a key role in the destruction of illegal coca fields.

Alva Castro explained that there wee only 400 hectares remaining in the jungle region of San Martin, a region where coca leaves are still cultivated.

Furthermore, Alva Castro reported that over 160,000 hectares of land in Peru's jungle no longer produced illegal coca leaves but were being used to grow crops.

"Almost 40 percent of Huallaga's economy depended on coca. Now it's only 7 percent," said the minister.

When reporting on 2007 achievements, Alva Castro stated that not only had 20 tons of drugs been destroyed during that year but also 1,020 tons of chemicals used to produce drugs had been seized.

He added that 33 money-laundering cases worth hundreds of millions of dollars had been handed over to Peruvian courts in 2007.